by J. G. Kemp
The green circle in the coloring book turned into a hole. I felt in my left pocket. Nothing was there. I watched the clock on my desk. 30 seconds passed. 45 seconds. 50 seconds. 55 seconds. 56…57…58…59… I felt in my pocket again and pulled out a small green marble!
I could make anything appear - wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted!
Chapter 4
sick day
I couldn’t go to school the next day. I just couldn’t. I had work to do. I had a Quantum Coloring Book! I couldn’t waste time sitting in Mr. Stale’s class, or running in circles in gym. I had to pretend I was sick. I had to be sick. And I knew just what to do.
“Wake up, Brandon,” my dad whispered the next morning, shaking me gently in my bed. “Time to get up, Big Buddy.”
I rolled on to my side and made a “uuuuuhhhhhhhh” noise. “I don’t feel good,” I groaned and quickly threw off my covers and ran to the bathroom.
The night before I had drawn a picture of vomit in the coloring book, before hiding the book under the sink. Beside it I had left a puke-green colored pencil.
I colored in the picture and thought, “This is going to look like the grossest vomit ever.” And as I finished coloring, I made a loud “bleeeggghhh” sound.
Out of the book came pouring the most disgusting chunky green vomit. It looked terrible! I held the book above the toilet. Some got on my hand. It burned. It smelled awful. I hid the book under the sink again, and my dad knocked on the door.
“You okay, big buddy? Can I come in?” he asked.
“Uuuuhhhhhhhh,” I groaned. I didn’t like pretending I was sick. I didn’t like tricking my dad, but I had to stay home with the book. I just had to. I had to fix Smudge Street.

My dad opened the door and saw me huddled on the floor. He looked in the toilet and gagged. “Oh my! That…doesn’t… look…” He gagged again and stepped back. “I think you should stay home today, buddy. You go back to bed. I’ll let your mom know.”
As I slumped out of the bathroom I made more moaning, “uuuhhhhhhh” sounds. And when I got to my room I closed the door and went back to sleep. My plan had worked perfectly. I had a sick day!
An hour later my mom came into my room. She looked tired. She usually slept all day.
“Hey, little guy,” she said and sat on my bed and rubbed my hair. I rolled over so she couldn’t see my face. I wasn’t good at pretending I was sick. “How ya feeling?” she asked.
“Uuuuuhhhhhh” I moaned again.
“Can I get you anything?” She yawned and rubbed her eyes and then put her hand on my forehead. It was nice - I liked it when my mom took care of me. Now that she worked at night, and usually on the weekends, she wasn’t around as much anymore. “Well, you don’t have a fever,” she said. She yawned again.
I suddenly felt guilty. My mom was tired from working all night, and here I was, pretending to be sick, and making her worried. I didn’t want to lie to my mom. Besides, my mom could always tell when I wasn’t sick. She was a nurse, after all.
I had to confess. I faced her and said, in my sorriest sounding voice, “Mom, I’m not really sick.”
She frowned and sat up straight. “Brandon! You’re not sick?! Brandon, you can’t do that!”
She stood up and crossed her arms. “Brandon…”
She was mad, and I could tell she was thinking of a punishment.
“Brandon, since you’re not going to school today, you’re going to clean this whole house. I am so disappointed in you.” She turned to leave. “I’ll be sleeping, and if this house isn’t clean by the time I wake up, you will be grounded for a week!”
I felt terrible. But I guess I got want I wanted. I did get to stay home. And since my mom slept all day, I could draw things in the book, and no one would ever know…
Chapter 5
smudge street
I sat up in my bed and thought for a minute. I had to clean fast, or I wouldn’t have time to draw in the book. The last time I had to clean the whole house it took me five hours!
Maybe I could make something that would clean for me. I know. Robots! I could draw robots to clean the house. They would do a much better job than me. That was helping people. Yeah, helpful robots. That’s perfect. My mom will be asleep, and the robots can clean while I rebuild Smudge Street.
But then I remembered Ms. Violet. I couldn’t let Ms. Violet see house-cleaning robots. “I know, I’ll remake Smudge Street, and then Ms. Violet can go home, and then I’ll draw the robots.” Although I would miss Ms. Violet’s breakfasts.
I got dressed and sat at my desk and opened the book. “I better be sure this is going to work before I draw the whole street,” I thought. So I started with my fort.
I drew it the best I could and colored it brown. “This is going to grow to be exactly like my fort, right where it was before it was destroyed.”

From my bedroom window I could see part of the backyard, but not where my fort used to be. I listened carefully for a minute. I heard snoring.
“Snoortttssnnnuuugggh Snoort”
My mom was asleep. She was “the loudest snorer that ever lived,” my grandpa used to say.
I knew if she caught me I would be in really big trouble, but I had to see if it worked. I opened my window slowly, crawled out as quietly as I could, and eased myself onto the grass outside.
I crept to the corner of the house, just far enough to see my fort. And there it was! My fort was there - just as if it hadn’t been destroyed. It worked! I could do it. I could fix it all!
I could also see most of Smudge Street. There were still lots of men working, and dump trucks, and diggers scraping up rubble. “Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s do this.”
I crawled back to my room. I drew Smudge Street, and the houses that had been crushed, and the fence in my back yard, and the sidewalks, and the fire hydrants, and as many trees as I could remember. It took up three pages.

Before I colored them, it occurred to me: what if I drew a house, and it grew so fast that it hurt someone? What if it grew right on top of them? I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“Maybe if I make the houses grow slowly, people will notice and move out of the way.” Yeah, that would be okay. I was ready.
As I colored, I thought, “Smudge Street is going to be just like it used to be. And it’s going to take… ten minutes.”
I thought ten minutes was plenty of time for people to move out of the way of growing houses.
As much as I wanted to sneak out and watch, I really didn’t want to get caught, so I stayed in my room and listened…
And then I heard mooing. Lots of mooing!
“Mooooo! Mooooo! MOOOOO!MOOOOO! Mooooo! MOOOOO!”
It must have woken up my mom because she shouted, “Brandon, stop that!” and then “Brandon, come here!”
I ran to the front door where my mom and Ms. Violet were staring outside. There were cows everywhere! “Yip Yip Yip Yip,” Chippers was barking like crazy.
“Mooooooo Mooooo! Mooooo! MOOOOO!”
There were cows in the street, and on top of cars, and in the dump trucks. There were cows on the rubble of Ms. Violet’s house. Cows were eating the grass in the front yard. And there was another weird thing - Smudge Street was covered in dirt.
Across the street there was an old-looking house, one that I’d never seen before. But the new houses weren’t there!
“Oh my,” said Ms. Violet, “it’s Lavender’s old house. They took that down years and years ago. Lavender was my best friend.” Ms. Violet smiled at me. “It looks just like it used to. How nice. Come on, Chippers, let’s go for a walk.”
“Oh no,” I thought. I had brought back the houses from a long time ago, and the cows from when Ms. Violet was a little girl. How did that happen?
“Mooooooo. Mooooooo.”
Then my mom must have remembered what I had done, because she frowned and said,
“Brandon, I think you’ve seen enough, now go inside and clean that house, young man.”
Chapter 6
robots and books
I ran to my room. Arrr! I was mad at myself. I had to try again. I had to fix Smudge Street. I knew I could do it. It had worked perfectly with my fort. I just had to say the right words.
“Brandon! Get Cleaning!” my mom shouted. Her bedroom door closed. She was going back to sleep.
“Moooooooo Moooooooo”
I needed to get to work. I had to clean the house. I had to make the robots before Ms. Violet came back from her walk.
As quickly as I could, I drew a vacuuming robot with a muffler so it didn’t make any noise, and a dusting robot that looked more like a big ball of paper towels, and a picking-up-things robot that was a big bin covered in arms, and a clean-the-nooks-and-crannies robot that was really small and had toothbrushes all over it.
I colored them silver and made them small, about as big as Chippers.
When they had finished growing, the robots stood at attention on my desk - waiting for their orders.
“Clean my room,” I commanded.
And they worked fast! The robots whirred around me - my toys and dirty clothes flew through the air, the dust just… disappeared. They moved so fast I could barely see them - it was like watching ghosts clean my room in fast-forward. And they were finished in less than five minutes!
When they were done they just stood there, completely still, waiting for more orders.
“Snoortttssnnnuuugggh.” My mom was still sleeping. I opened my bedroom door quietly and whispered, “Clean the whole house, as fast as you can.” And off they went, in a blur. “They would be finished in 15 minutes, easy!” I thought. “House cleaning robots are awesome!”
“Moooooooo Moooooooo”
“Okay, back to work. Time to make some houses.” But when I saw all the holes in the quantum coloring book, I was struck with a sudden terror.
I had used 4 pages coloring robots! What was I going to do when the book ran out?! I had used up so many pages already - on marbles, and chocolate, and sword-fighters, and tanks, and a dog, and houses, and robots. The book had so many holes in it.
For a minute I just sat there, frozen, but then it occurred to me. Maybe I could color more quantum coloring books.
And I did it - I colored ten more! And I hid them.
I hid two under my bed, two in my desk, three in my closet, and three in my backpack.
I was pleased with myself. I was doing good. I knew I could fix Smudge Street, with a little practice, and the house was going to be cleaner than ever, and I would never run out of quantum coloring books.
“Moooooooo Moooooooo”
And so what? Maybe there were cows everywhere, but that was no big deal. Everything was going to work out just fine.

* * *
Have you ever heard that expression, “It’s always darkest just before dawn?” It means that things are always the worst just before they get better.
That might be true, but I think it works the opposite way also. I think everything seems fine just before it gets really bad. And things were are about to get really bad…
Chapter 7
the winning ticket
After the robots cleaned the house, and I hid them in my closet, my mom woke up. She was shocked how clean everything was. For a minute, I don’t think she was mad at all.
But then she made me clean the bathrooms too. It took me a long time. I had forgotten to make a bathroom-cleaning robot. Uggg, the bathrooms were the worst - how could I forget that!
While I scrubbed the quantum vomit off the rim of the toilet, I decided not to make the new Smudge Street until tomorrow. After all, Ms. Violet really liked the cows, and I really liked her breakfasts.
That afternoon, my mom had to leave early for her job at the hospital. She looked so tired. And my dad had to stay late at work. And Ms. Violet had gone to get her hair done. So it was just me and Hazel until dinner. We watched TV. She wasn’t happy that she had to “babysit” me, she said.
While we were watching one of Hazel’s favorite shows, a show about teenagers that turned into unicorns, a commercial came on about how to make money. It had a jingle that went, “Make a lot of money, make a lot of money, make a lot of money and you’ll never work again!” It was sung by a man wearing a suit covered in dollar signs.
“I wish we had more money,” I said to Hazel. “Then mom and dad wouldn’t have to work so much.”
“Yeah,” Hazel agreed.
I had thought earlier that maybe I could draw money in the coloring book, and give it to my parents, but I knew that would raise too many questions. People didn’t just find millions of dollars and get to keep it. They always had to return it to the “rightful owners”.
“Maybe we’ll win the lottery,” said Hazel.
“The Lottery!” I blurted out. “That’s it! Dad sometimes plays the lottery!”
Hazel looked at me strangely. “Brandon, you’re acting funny. You’ve been acting funny for days. Are you sure you aren’t sick? What’s got into you?”
“Nothing, I gotta go,” I said and ran off to my room.
That was it, that was perfect! I could draw a winning lottery ticket. I could say I found it. Or better yet, I could make my dad find it. I could make it appear in his wallet! That was really using the book for good.
As I colored my drawing of a lottery ticket, I thought, “This is going to be a winning lottery ticket, for tonight, and it’s going to appear in my dad’s wallet.”
The drawing of the lottery ticket disappeared and there was a hole left in the book.
That night, as soon as my dad got home from work, I ran up to him and asked, “Hey Dad, remember that lottery ticket you got the other day? Did we win?”
“Lottery ticket? What lottery ticket?” he said, confused. He was taking off his shiny shoes and loosening his power-tie. “I don’t remember getting a lottery ticket.”
“Yeah, it was the other day,” I said. “You put it in your wallet. We should see if you won.”
“Hummm,” he said. “I don’t remember that.” He pulled his wallet from his pants and opened it and took out a lottery ticket. It looked real.
I knew my dad wouldn’t be too concerned. He was so forgetful anyway, he would just assume he’d forgotten all about it. “That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t remember this at all.” He looked closely at the ticket. “You’re right, it is for tonight. Hummm.”
He looked at me with the strangest look, and then shrugged. “Well, let’s see if we won, huh Big Buddy?”
My dad went to his computer for a minute… typed in some numbers… and then froze… and then looked at me… and then dropped to the floor, unconscious.
“Dad, are you okay!” I said. “Dad!” I shook him awake. He tried to talk, but he couldn’t say anything. His eyes were wide open and he just pointed at the computer.
I looked at the screen. I looked at the lottery ticket. The numbers matched. In big bold letters on the screen was the number: $3,000,000.00. I had done it! We had won the lottery! We had won 3 million dollars!
* * *
That’s not so bad, right? What could be bad about 3 million dollars? Well, just wait…
Chapter 8
party disaster
The next day, life at the Black house was turned upside-down.
My dad was the happiest I’d ever seen him. In the morning he bought a black sports car and took me for a drive. I didn’t even have to go to school that day!

“I could buy ten of these!” he said. “You want one, Big Buddy?” He talked about vacations we were going to take and houses we were going to buy. He didn’t stop talking once.
On the way home we stopped by my Uncle Blurt’s house, my dad’s older brother, and showed him the sports car.

“I would’a bought me a
F-10,000 truck,” My Uncle Blurt said.
When we got home, my dad called everyone he knew and invited them over for “the biggest party since 1999”.
On the phone he used phrases like, “Par-tayyy at the Black’s” and “Come get your P-A-R-T-Y on.” My dad never said words like “par-tayyyy”. It was weird. And at the party he kept singing and hugging everyone, and he had a smile that was so big I thought it would stick that way.